Water use efficiency and related pollutants' abatement costs of regional industrial systems in China: a slacks-based measure approach

• Chinese industrial water efficiency and pollutants' abatement costs are examined.
• A slacks-based measure approach based on pollutant weak disposability is proposed.
• Measures of water saving and pollutants' reduction potentials are presented.
• The shadow prices of pollutants are used to represent their abatement costs.
• Some findings for efficiency improvement of water management in China are achieved.

Water saving and wastewater cleaning are two important ways to alleviate water shortage crisis in China. This paper aims to examine water use efficiency and abatement costs of two main pollutants in wastewater, i.e., chemical oxygen demand (COD) and ammonia nitrogen (NH4–N), of regional industrial systems in China. For this purpose, a slacks-based measure model based on the assumption of undesirable output weak disposability is developed. Based on the proposed model, the measures of water saving potential, COD reduction potential, NH4–N reduction potential, COD abatement cost and NH4–N abatement cost are presented. We apply the proposed approaches to investigate water use efficiency, water saving potential, the two pollutants' reduction potentials and their related abatement costs during 2009–2010. Results of the application show that there are great potentials to reduce water consumption and pollutants' discharges in China's regional industrial production process, and there exist evident geographic disparities in water saving potentials, pollutants' reduction potentials and their abatement costs. It is found that water use efficiency increases from 2009 to 2010, while pollutants abatement costs decrease. Some other findings and implications for efficiency improvement of China's regional industrial systems in water management and pollutants' abatement are achieved.